The Aeolian Church, or at least my misunderstandings thereof.

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From: Alex Ferguson (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 23 May 1994 - 00:59:08 EEST

Joerg:
> >> Not in the God Learner sense of "theistic".

> Now it's my time to say: Why do you argue, I agreed.

You appeared to be agreeing with faint damns. ("'s, GLism...)

> > Wizardry is sorcery with a funny hat, to anyone else but the Westerners.
> > There is no objective way. or even one most people agree on, to tell the
> > difference between a sorceror and a wizard.

> The RQ:AiG set of spells did change this to some degree: There are
> a number of ritual spells useful only for religious purposes, called
> Banishment (a funeral rite), Blessing (e.g. at weddings etc.) and its
> reversed (which needn't be by The Power Of The Invisible God, but can be),
> and Solace, a spell for the dying moment of the caster, preparing his way
> to Solace. I doubt these work for any but true followers of the IG, so
> there you are.

If that's the intent behind these spells, it's quite mistaken, I believe. When did the IG become immanent? Since he isn't, how does he get to decide who's a true follower? If he were, how soon could we expect the first divinations to clear up minor details such as the Hrestol/Rokar split? (While I disagree with those that think having a manifest god handy eliminates theological and factional disputes, it might just keep it down to a dull roar, which the Malkioni could only envy.)

BTW, since, Gregged or not, AiG apparently refuses to die, can one still get one's paws an a draft, so that one might (gasp at its wonderfullness| give Greg a standing ovation for punting it)?

> > "Wizardry" is really only
> > well-defined to mean "sorcery [in the RQ sense] which we approve of".
> > Even "follows the commandments of the IG" is something which is open to
> > interpretation, manipulation, and downright fraud, and isn't much like
> > the (enforcible) requirements to belong to theistic cults.

> I'd say that the requirements of the Rokari church are as easily
> enforcible as those of say Chalana Arroy. Or do you mean that the
> spells don't become one-use? Neither does cult spirit magic, and I find
> this a rules nit anyway.

Only enforcable by mundane means, not divine ones. If a theist commits a sacrilegious act, various consequences ensue, _without_ any human intervention. (To wit, becoming an Inactive initiate (which has more than just "rules nit" consequences, and/or spirits of reprisal.) Excommunication needs human action, but will generally follow from the foregoing, and has tangible affects. ("My Son, why have you Gone Inactive, and why are those Flint Slingers banging away at your noggin? <zap> Consider yourself an ex-initiate.")

If a Rokari flouts his religions strictures, nothing much happens, unless he's caught with his hand in the poor box, or some other part of his anatomy in a local peasant wench/sheep/chaos monster. Even then, it's a matter for the vagarities of human sanctions.

Where a manifest (deity|saint) is worshipped too, your kilometrage may clearly vary. ("No, really, I left the monks of St. Gerlant Flamesword for, errrr, personal reasons.")

> > The "most important" spell is likely to be one taught
> > at (ordinary shrines).

> Like all those useless Cloud Call shrines dotting Sartar?

Cloud Call is a _spectacularly_ useful spell: not only is it the duty of every Orlanth priest to pray daily for rain ("Here, cloudy-cloudy!"), but also it might just make the difference to whether or not you can cast Thunderbolt.

> > At the moment, it could be argued "heroquest" is a polite
> > term for "no-one knows how this works".

> I have a "working" system, mainly by ignoring any rule change, but by
> changing the world aspects.

I agree that it's probably fairly impossible to nail down, but trying to HeroQuest under bog-standard RQ is like trying to do microsurgery wearing boxing gloves, and with no scalpel. Blindfold optional.

> I think any attempt to quantify heroquest
> effects will end up with a non-Arkati, God Learner view of the
> participants, and be detrimental.

See my previous anti-Arkat flame for my views on the slenderness of this distinction. Would that we understood HQing well enough that all we had to worry about was quantifying the effects.

> >> (Sartar is sorcery-user friendly [...])

> > I think
> > most Sartarites would be very unhappy with Aeolians they happen to bump into,
> > chucking around sorcery willy-nill, and saying wildly heretical things
> > about _their_ god in the same breath as stuff about this ficticious
> > deity the Westerners worship.

> What is heretical in saying that Orlanth is supreme King of Gods, and
> has the most noble ancestry of all Elements?

The juxtaposition, for one thing. The chances of taking two quite distinct theologies and combining them in a way acceptable to both is very slim ("either" would be a struggle); religious people tend to be touchy about these things, for some strange reason.

I've heard Sikhism described as a "combination" of Islam and Hinduism; result: all three putting bombs under the cars of the remaining two. (Yes, both ancedent and conclusion are grossly oversimplified here for purposes of snappy rhetoric.)

> These guys speak a bit
> funnily about the deities, using some outlandish (western) prefix for
> the cults.

This is more than a little too glib. You've given examples of characters who're essentially pure sorcerors, with a veneer of Theyalan "saint" worship, and then claimed that when sighted by Orlanth cultists, they rush together for a brotherly hug? Perhaps the ones you've mentioned aren't typical, or perhaps they just keep very quiet about the s*rc*ry...

> I doubt the average Gloranthan will notice the difference between a
> somewhat outlandish casting of a spirit spell and a sorcery spell.

If the cult advertises the fact, and it is practically bound to in this case, given the explicit role of the IG in their theology, and the presence about Whitewall of twenty foot signs saying "Wizard's Guild, apply within", I think he might. I'd give him an INTx5% roll, perhaps.

> The Aeolians are far more off-Malkioni than off-Theyalan. This is, their
> Malkionism is far more compromised than Irish Christianity ever was.

That the proposed religion oozes with sorcery, has the Invisible God as the first deity of its Trinity, and reduces every other deity in sight to the status of "saint" suggests to me that it's Malkionised enough to have the typical tribesman sharpening a stake or twelve.

Okay, I exagerate: after all, the two religions aren't _particularly_ hostile to each other, relatively speaking. However, they are a long way from being co-religionists, and have the added gulf of a different "mode" of worship to overcome.

> I hope to scare the living daylight out of the other bishops at HtWWW
> with my Theyalan convictions, and expect a quite fiery end if I can't
> rally the Stygians.

Personally, I think different Stygian sects get on about as well as... well, not at all well, really. Perhaps a case of "My Sworn Enemy for Clause 4 is my Eternal Brother in the matter of Clause 6."

> I have little personal experience with catholicism, but I bow to the
> inside knowledge of Greg Stafford, who has been quoted to say it was
> a polytheistic religion.

If Greg's an unbiased observer, I'm an enthusiastic proponent of pantheonistic initiation. At any rate, if there's ever been more than Three gods (more like two and a bit) in Christianity, there's been a strict pecking order, and the intent has been subversion, not incorporation.

> I don't use the usual, 20th century definition of Saint. Intentionally so.
> I try to use the Irish and Anglosaxon definition of Saints, as far as my
> knowledge permits. Ever compared St. Brennan to Manannan McLir?

That some saints are pagan co-optees isn't in doubt. But how many Wotanists think Christianity is a great religion because of all the pagan trappings, not to say name, of Easter?

Certainly the "true" saints of the West seem to be regarded very differently from gods, so I don't think you can entirely escape the "20th century" connotations I suggest.

I suspect that the Ralian Henotheistic Church doesn't use the term saint for "actual" deities, but that other Malkioni (heretical) cults, who consider the manifest deities less important, do.

> The Western definitions for False Gods and Saints aren't too different.
> Mortal Saints are what you would call Cult Heroes in theist cults, Divine
> Saints are individuals who attained their divinity either in Godtime
> (Malkion, the Orlanthi deities) or through apotheosis in Time (Dormal,
> Arkat, Belintar).

Bit of a fine distinction, then. At any rate, what I was suggesting was that if a god receives active, fairly "traditional" worship in an area, having a bunch of Wizards swan along and downrate him to Saint Thingy isn't likely to cause them to whoop for joy. On the other hand, if they do this to someone in the "hero" (approximate) category, it sounds as if it could be a promotion, maybe. Using the same term for obscure heroes and major deities doesn't really inspire confidence in claims that this _isn't_ a questioning of the importance of the latter, though.

> > I meant, is he being initiated _to_ something in particular, but that
> > question doesn't translate well across the boundaries of our different
> > views on theistic initiation.

> He is initiated to the cult and its secrets. He will form his special
> link to a patron, or remain with the mainstream Orlanth Miscellaneous
> cultists.

That's just a vague concept, not a "something". Since, in my opinion, this identification, this "link" is whole _point_ of initiation, the loss of this is where all my troubles with pantheon initiation start. Now, if the Aeolian church is principally a theistic one, as Joerg currently suggests (can you tell I'm confused?), this is liable to rearise, though perhaps to a lesser extent.

> > Ahem, I never said it wasn't important to the _cultist_. I'm saying that
> > I think the _truth_ of what a cult claims about the afterlife it offers is
> > a matter beyond discussion of cult structure, GLish "proof", 'n'stuff.
> > Whether it's beyond HQ is a thorny issue.

> It isn't. The Jonstown Compendium in RQC has someone visiting King
> Heort's halls (within the Halls of Orlanth, I think) and witness this
> hero's afterlife.

And what does that "prove"? That all the claims of the Orlanthi afterlife are true, because you can HQ there and check if your great-uncle made it? I doubt it, and would find it rather boringly deterministic if you could. That Heort turns up in heroquests to Heort's Hall isn't a shocker, but apotheosis, afterlife, the heroplane and the spirit world are distinctions which could be split all day long. One might also argue that it's the act of heroquesting that "puts" Heort in his hall, not that he was "really there" all along.

> > After all, if it were a matter of GLish cult comparisons, it would be
> > hard to see how you could "get to" the same afterlife by Aeolian and
> > Sartarite Orlanthi worship.

> You go to Solace in Orlanth's Halls. Easy, isn't it?

Facile, even. If you subscribe to this idea of cultic afterlife determinism, how does a religious life dominated by wizardry and tacking on active Orlanth worship as an optional extra "earn" you a place there? Much as you approve of "true" afterlives, I think this'd work better as a false one.

> In X-RQ-ID: 4048, Alex actually backs my position of Malkioni Saints
> (outside of the Aeolian church). What did I do wrong?

Actually, I have very few objections to the Aeolian Church, apart from where you've put it. BTW, where does the name come from?

Alex.

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